The House of Industry was a workhouse in Dublin, Ireland which existed from its establishment by an act of Parliament in 1703, "for the employment and maintaining the poor thereof".

[4] The foundation stone of the hospital was recorded as having been laid by the Duchess of Ormond on the 12th of October 1704 following it being established by the Dublin Workhouse Act 1703 (2 Anne c. 19 (I)).

This foundling hospital took in deserted infants in Dublin, but owing to its abnormally high mortality rates (four out of five) it came under scrutiny and investigation.

In 1805 Sir John Carr in his Tour of Ireland described the workhouse as "A gloomy abode of mingled want, disease, vice and malady, where lunatics were loaded with heavy chains and fallen women bound and logged";[9] and Parliament believed the House of Industry was a failure and "completely worthless".

[10] Described as 'the Dublin Poor House', it was also visited by the French political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835, during his investigative tour of Ireland.

[11] With the passage of the Irish Poor Law in 1838, the House of Industry on James's Street became the South Dublin Union.